Part treatise, part miscellany, unfailingly entertaining. - Associated Press. a towering accomplishment. . . - Entertainment Weekly Magnificent . - The Wall Street Journal Kurlansky packs his breezy book with terrific anecdotes.
Kurlansky] has a keen eye for odd facts and natural detail. . . - Los Angeles Times Book Review Fascinating stuff .
Suffused with Kurlansky\'s] pleasure in exploring the city across ground that hasn\'t already been covered with other writers\' footprints.
With The Big Oyster , Mark Kurlansky serves up History at its most engrossing, entertaining, and delicious.
Filled with cultural, historical, and culinary insight-along with historic recipes, maps, drawings, and photos-this dynamic narrative sweeps readers from the seventeenth-century founding of New York to the death of its oyster beds and the rise of America\'s environmentalist movement, from the oyster cellars of the rough-and-tumble Five Points slums to Manhattan\'s Gilded Age dining chambers.
For centuries New York was famous for this particular shellfish, which until the early 1900s played such a dominant a role in the city\'s life that the abundant bivalves were Gotham\'s most celebrated export, a staple food for all classes, and a natural filtration system for the city\'s congested waterways. -Rocky Mountain News Award-winning author Mark Kurlansky tells the remarkable story of New York by following the trajectory of one of its most fascinating inhabitants-the oyster. a great tale of the growth of a modern city as seen through the rise and fall of the lowly oyster. . . -The New York Times A small pearl of a book .
Part treatise, part miscellany, unfailingly entertaining
